


Distance Makes the Heart Resourceful

by lalalalalawhy



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Cryptography, Florida, Love finds a way, Love is a Puzzle, M/M, Secret Messages, the FBI is really bad at WitSec
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-13
Updated: 2016-10-13
Packaged: 2018-08-22 05:36:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8274718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalalalalawhy/pseuds/lalalalalawhy
Summary: ERIS SEEKS EROS Moss your hit living bid. Though far away close at hand and closer to heart.
 Holt raised his eyebrows and glanced around. Today’s was a steamy one!





	

**Trenton, New Jersey, 1995**

Technically, it was illegal.

Well, it was at least against protocol. But Holt wasn’t going to give this up, this little hint of pleasure in a joyless world, for anything.

He let the boys helping out with the sting think that he literally read the paper cover-to-cover every morning -- everything except the funny papers.

Now… where was it? It was always a small victory, finding these little hints, reading each personal ad with new eyes, trying to think like Kevin did. Ah. There.

“ERIS SEEKS EROS Moss your hit living bid. Though far away close at hand and closer to heart.”

Holt raised his eyebrows and glanced around. Today’s was a steamy one! The transpositions of the i and the o in the first sentence was almost obscene, and what was he thinking, writing “close at hand”? The rascal.

Holt hid a smile and turned the page. He’d have his own moment, mossing Kevin’s hit living bid, when he could be both close at hand and undisturbed.

 

**Brooklyn Heights, New York City, a few months earlier**

Their conversation over dinner (roasted chicken, broccoli, and fingerling potatoes, paired with a nice chardonnay and served at their kitchen table with the good napkins) had been more intense than Raymond had anticipated. He and Kevin had been dating for several years, and Kevin had never objected to his job in quite this way before. Then again, his job had never taken him away for quite this long before.

“Tell me again,” Kevin said on their after-dinner walk, even though they’d gone over the details several times at dinner.

“I’m going away for a while, and I don’t know how long,” Raymond said, aware of his surroundings and wary of giving too many details where prying ears could hear.

“And where are you going?” Kevin asked.

“New Jersey.”

“Each time I ask I hope it’s a different answer, but it’s not, is it?” Kevin asked.

“No,” Holt said, gravely. “I’m going to New Jersey for a work trip for an indefinite period of time.”

Kevin sighed deeply, and Holt resisted the urge to join him.

“And you’ll have no contact with the outside world?”

“Well. I suppose I’ll be able to read the paper. But we aren’t supposed to have contact with anyone: in person, over the phone, or through the mail. Nothing that could be watched or tapped.”

Kevin’s eyes lit up, briefly. “I told you about the electronic mail the university set up, right?”

Raymond looked at Kevin and shook his head slightly. “Now, where would I get a computer?” The sting was to observe a major mafia trafficking ring -- not a lot of room to set up a computer terminal, complete with CPU.

“You’re right, I suppose,” Kevin said, looking a little despondent.

“Now, why don’t you tell me a story?” Raymond asked.

“Do you want a faculty story, a magazine story, or a story of heroes of old?” Kevin asked.

“Why don’t you tell me an old story. Tonight let’s do Greece.”

“Wonderful. Have I told you the story of Prometheus?” Kevin asked. Raymond shook his head.

Kevin told stories in a manner uniquely his own, with enthusiasm, gravity, and plenty of tangents into branches of scholarship. Raymond loved it, and forced himself to listen. It might be one of his last opportunities for a while.

On the morning of Raymond’s departure, Kevin kissed him, hard and looked him square in the eyes. “Be safe, come home to me, and keep an eye on the Classifieds,” he said.

“I will,” Raymond said, meaning the first two for certain and still a little confused as to the last one.

It only took two days. “TO MY PROMETHEUS” the ad copy began, “I have stolen the fire. Nothing will keep me from you.”

Raymond stared at it in disbelief. He was warm to his toes. He glanced around, furtively, to see if anyone else could see, had noticed that he was definitely in contact with the outside world. All the other cops were too concerned with their first cup of coffee or the surveillance camera to be paying any attention to him, let alone this one-inch by one-inch ad scrap of paper.

It happened the next day. And the next. And every day over the next three weeks, there, plain as day, a tiny missive in black and white. His message in a bottle from his partner, cast across the Hudson.

When he got back home, he took immediately took Kevin in his arms and kissed him mightily, trying to communicate with his lips all of his pent up _want_ from the past three weeks, all the frustration of not being able to touch him or see him but also the utter gratitude he felt for each and every ad he placed.

“Did you get my messages?” Kevin asked, a smile hinting at his lips.

“I fell in love with a genius,” Raymond said, walking backwards toward the bedroom, eager to demonstrate his gratitude in as many ways as possible before dawn.

 

**Brooklyn Heights, New York City, 2016**

Kevin’s brother had taken him out to dinner, which was a very nice gesture, but Kevin was sick to death of nice gestures. He wanted his husband back.

As if his sabbatical in France hadn’t been hard enough. As if Raymond weren’t dealing with enough stress without a serial killer on his back. As if the universe had absolutely no sense of right and wrong, no caring consideration for a man who missed his husband with all his heart.

He had shared a very nice bottle of Pinot with his brother, then came home and shared a very nice bottle of cabernet sauvignon with no one, because the FBI had apparently kidnapped his husband.

So yes, maybe he was a little unsteady, and yes, maybe he was a little emotional, and yes, maybe he was feeling a little horny because it had been nearly a month since he’d seen or talked to his husband and he was a man with needs.

He swiped at his face with the sleeve of his robe and opened up his laptop. He’d heard about how it was done these days. He wasn’t going to do it himself, but he just… he wanted to escape into someone else’s love life for a few minutes.

Craigslist, personals, men seeking men -- click, click, click. There he was, suddenly, awash in the desires of total strangers. “I want a tongue in my ass,” the first one read, and, though that did sound like a good time, there was only one man’s tongue Kevin wanted in his ass for the rest of his life. “Just good, safe sex,” read another one, which was more his speed, but not exactly fantasy material. Then, further down on the page, an ad caught his eye.

“I’m just a Drag looking for a Net,” it read. Huh. Kevin clicked the ad. The full ad read: “I’m missing the Cheddar in my man sandwich. Also the other piece of bread. Will you be my Demeter?”

Kevin stared at the screen, reading the words over and over again. They were his Raymond. Raymond was writing to him. It couldn’t be anyone else. “Drag” and “Net,” for Dragnet, which was how Kevin referred to Raymond’s job from late 1995 until about 2014. Demeter was of course the goddess of grain, and bread ( _very clever, Raymond,_ Kevin thought), and also one who lost someone very dear to the underworld.

He scrolled back frantically, through the blowjobs and jerkoffs and big dicks and cumsluts. There! From yesterday! “Black Cop 4 Ginger.” Inside: “very into roleplay: you be college prof just back from sabbatical, i’ll be a degraded cop who worships the ground you walk on.”

So much for subtlety.

Maybe it was the wine, maybe it was the heady possibility that Raymond was actually there, actually somewhere on the other end of a computer, but Kevin felt dizzy. His heart raced. His dick, the whole reason for this in the first place, twitched.

Kevin quickly frantically hit reply, “Are you there?” he typed. “I miss you desperately and want nothing more than your tongue in my ass,” then, just in case it wasn’t him, deleted the last bit and replaced it with, “I need you, my Prometheus.”

He hit send.

It immediately bounced back. Of course.

He tried once more, setting what must have been a world record for fastest Craigslist account setup. “Demeter Seeks Prometheus,” he wrote, and, in the body of the ad, “I stole fire for you once that Apollo delivered to Trenton. Hath Craig replaced Apollo, have you stolen the fire for me?”

Then, considering, Kevin quickly coded a cryptogram and added it below.

3  20-9-25-22  13-26-1-23  22-26-25-11-1-6  3-25  14-13  9-7-7.

 

* * *

 

 

**Coral Palms, Florida, 2016**

After Jake was done sobbing in the hot tub over Amy, Holt took Jake inside. Everything about Jake drooped. “I don’t get it, man,” he said, his voice raw from crying. “How are you so calm about this? Don’t you miss Kevin?”

“Of course I miss Kevin. But we have ways of dealing with the distance,” Holt said.

“How??” Jake asked, his voice verging on a wail.

Holt sighed. He really should not be telling Jake this, but he could barely stand to look at him so miserable, and this was a terrible way to run a witness protection program. 

“We do it in code,” Holt said. “Through a trusted third party.”

“And it works?” Jake said, daring to hope.

Holt nodded. “It does have to be very secret.”

 

**Brooklyn, New York, a few days later**

Gina walked into the station and made a beeline for Amy’s desk. She plopped down a poorly wrapped package about the size of a fist onto Amy’s desk, startling Amy.

“Gina, what…?” Amy began, but Gina cut her off.

“Ames, listen. I know you think my place is better than yours -- because it is -- but you can’t be having your online purchases shipped there!”

“I didn’t order anything,” Amy said.

“Okay, well, this is clearly addressed to you, and it clearly came to my place, so…”

“Oh my god,” Amy said. “Gina. The postmark is Florida. What if it’s Jake’s finger?”

“Ewwwwww,” Gina said, and smacked Amy with her oversized purse. “Why would you even say that?”

Amy made a face but got out her letter opener. She was terrified as she cut through the haphazard tape, and opened the box to find…

“A decoder ring?” Amy was seriously confused.

“Well? Is there a message to decode?”

Amy shook out the rest of the package and a grubby slip of paper fell out. She reached for it like it might explode.

“Well?!” Gina asked.

“Okay, okay!” Amy said, putting on the decoder ring and twisting the dials. She began to decode the message.

S-U-P, the first word read, and she could feel the relief flooding through her.

“Oh my god,” she hissed, “it’s a message from Jake!”

“Then hurry up and do the rest before anyone else sees!” Gina said. She slid her sunglasses onto her face and turned her face toward where the sun would be… if they were outside and she were cutting a hero’s profile. “I’ll create a distraction.”

Gina crossed the room and brought her voice up in a glissando: “Lllllllllllladies and gentlemen and everyone else,” she said, “I have decided to grace you all with a little preview of my next dance performance, an interpretive piece based on the movie ‘A Walk To Remember,’ only with one hundred percent less Mandy Moore.”

Music blared as Amy frantically translated the rest.

T-L-K-T-O-K-E-V-I-T-C-A-N-W-R-K-L-U-V-Y-A

Amy emailed Professor Kevin Cozner immediately, asking if they could meet up that evening.

 

**Coral Palms, Florida, a few days after that**

Jake came knocking on Holt’s front door, a piece of paper in his hand.

“Hello, neighbor,” he said when Holt opened the door. “I am baking cookies but I don’t have any eggs. May I come in?”

“Of course. I grocery shop regularly. You may borrow the number of eggs the recipe requires. Please come in,” he said.

Once the door closed Jake sighed and collapsed on the couch.

“Captain, you’ve got to help me,” he said. “Amy is so smart, and _way_ better at word game code stuff than I am. What does this one even mean?”

Holt looked at the paper and smiled.

“Ah,” he said, “an anaquote. Yes, Amy certainly knows her puzzlers. Now, this one breaks everything up into groups of three letters and arranges them alphabetically…”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the folks who egged me on on Twitter! This is for all of you.
> 
> The decoded cryptogram reads: "I want your tongue in my ass," because romance. Comment if you worked it out!


End file.
